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Growth Hacking or: Lean Marketing for Startups
PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at ???
”“
In 1996 co-workers Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith planned to start JavaSoft
They were afraid their boss might read their emails
They were afraid their boss might read their emails
So they built a web-based email system
...and so was born
They raised $300,000 from
investors
But Hotmail’s launch was unimpressive
July August
Their growth strategy was to buy billboards and radio ads
But investor Timothy Draper had a better idea
Put ‘PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail’ at the bottom of each e-mail. ”“
July September
Within hours, Hotmail’s growth took the shape of a classic
hockey stick curve
July September
They started averaging 3,000 new users a day
July September November
Within 6 months, they were up to 1 million users
July September November January
Five weeks later, they hit the 2 million user mark
In one case, Bhatia sent an email to a friend in India
In one case, Bhatia sent an email to a friend in India
within 3 weeks Hotmail had 300,000 users there
July September November January March May July September November
When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years after launch, Hotmail had 12 million users
July September November January March May July September November
When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years after launch, Hotmail had 12 million users
(There were only 70 million internet users at the time)
This story is not an anomaly
Why did these companies succeed when everyone else failed?
Mattan Griffel Founder & CEO, One Month mattangriffel.com
What we’re going to cover today
What Is Growth Hacking? Growth Hacking Best Practices
This is adapted from posts by Dave McClure, Andrew Chen, Noah Kagan and others, as well as
from my own experience
Most startups find themselves facing the
same problem
They build a product that no one ends up using
Say your startup has
an idea
You assemble a team and start building
Six months later, you have a product you're happy releasing
When that day finally comes, you launch and…
When that day finally comes, you launch and…
nothing happens.
You get a writeup on TechCrunch and several thousand users
You get a writeup on TechCrunch and several thousand users
(But most of them stop using it after a few days)
July September November January March May July September November
Nothing like the tremendous viral growth you were anticipating
What do you do?
TechCrunch of Initiation
Wearing Off of Novelty
Trough of Sorrow
Releases of Improvement
Crash of Ineptitude
Wiggles of False Hope
The Promised Land!
You’re in the trough of sorrow, my friend
Continuing to ship new features is the worst thing you can do
It compounds what the real problem was in the first place, which is that you don't know what's wrong
Enter the growth hacker
WTF is
Growth Hacking ?
TechCrunch of Initiation
Wearing Off of Novelty
Trough of Sorrow
Releases of Improvement
Crash of Ineptitude
Wiggles of False Hope
The Promised Land!
Growth hacking is a set of tactics and best practices for
dealing with user growth
Growth hacking is a set of tactics and best practices for
dealing with user growth
How do I get more users?
Growth hacking is a set of tactics and best practices for
dealing with user growth
How do I get more of my users to be active?
How do I reduce churn?
How do I increase the lifetime value of a user?
How do I get more users?How do I measure the effectiveness of new features?
What is our AHA moment?
Viral growth
Viral growth
Landing page optimization
SEO
Product management
Email marketing
Analytics
Behavioral economicsPR
Onboarding
UX
Landing page optimization
Most companies only track three things
Traffic
Revenue
Users
Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5
Get traffic ? Get
users ? Profit
Those metrics aren’t very helpful
Those metrics aren’t very helpful
(The magic is what happens in between)
The key is to map out the user lifecycle for your product
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTIONREFERRAL
REVENUE
The lean marketing framework
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
ACQUISITION
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
Acquisition = getting people to come to your site
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
ACQUISITION
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
Activation = getting people to sign up for anything that could lead to a repeat visit
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
Retention = getting users to become active
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
Revenue = monetizing active users
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTIONREFERRAL
REVENUE
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
Referral = getting active users to refer others
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTIONREFERRAL
REVENUE
SEO
PRSEM
Viral
BlogsEmail Contests
Partnerships
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTIONREFERRAL
REVENUE
The lean marketing framework
Let’s see it in action
You hear about Quora after your friend posts a question
from Quora to TwitterAcquisition
After reading the page you decide to create an
accountAcquisition
Activation
...a few days go by
Acquisition
Activation
You get a weekly digest email with questions and
links back to the siteAcquisition
Activation
Retention
Once you’re back, Quora encourages you to read
related questionsAcquisition
Activation
Retention
And share interesting questions through
Twitter and FacebookAcquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Quora doesn’t currently make money
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue
Each step of the LMF corresponds to a user state
The growth hacker’s job is to figure out how to move users from one state to the next
Creates an account Visits again later
???
You need to measure conversions at each step
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
1752174
1744
10% 30% 30%
Mixpanel and KISSmetrics are great for analytics
plug-and-play
Dave McClure’s example conversion metrics
At first your numbers will be really shitty
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
0317
1744
1% 18% 0%
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
0317
1744
At first your numbers will be really shitty
Focus here
1% 18% 0%
At first your numbers will be really shitty
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
017174
1744
10% 10% 0%
Don’t focus on acquisition if your
activation rate is 1%
Growth hackers have developed tactics for optimizing the funnel
Measure the quality of traffic sources
Minimal landing pages to convert better
Onboarding to improve activation and retention
Get people to come back using email
Incentivization to get people to share
Identify companies that focus on optimizing and try to learn from them
Testing
Unbounce is an amazing tool for easily creating and testing landing pages
Optimizely is a great tool if you already have a site
Vanity and A/Bingo are testing frameworks for Ruby on Rails
Measure the lifetime effect of a change
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
1752174
1744
10% 30% 30%
Version A 1744 (100%) 174 (10%) 52 (30%) 17 (30%)
Version B 1670 (100%) 100 (6%) 60 (60%) 18 (30%)
Notable Growth Hacks
BrandYourself kept their Mashable article trending for 2 days by promoting it on
StumbleUpon
Acquisition:
OKCupid has a “tour guide” that interacts with you during the
signup process
Activation:
Groupon has two different pages for Google vs. Direct
traffic
Activation:
(Footers are good for SEO but reduce conversions)
Path texts the app to your phone
Activation:
Dropbox sends an email when a user signs up but never
installs the software
Activation:
Eventbrite sends emails if you’ve been inactive for too long
Retention:
Path has your friends do it instead!
Retention:
Path has your friends do it instead!
Retention:
(Can have a 10x higher conversion rate)
Facebook integration makes it really easy
to get people to share
Referral:
Dropbox, LivingSocial, and Appsumo know incentivization works well too
Referral:
Quora forces people to sign up before they
can read answers
Referral:
Growth Hacking Resources
Quora has boards on Growth Hacks and Growth Hacking
Andrew Chen has posted a list of notable
growth hackers:
Coming soon… One Month
Growth Hacking
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